Happy Hawaii 5-OH, Jenny!

We celebrated Jenny's 50th birthday with a fundraising luau for ALS. We decided we couldn't afford to send the whole family, but Ethan would have loved the hula dancers, especially the tiny one.

Jenny is pictured here with her neighborhood helpers, guests of honor for the luau. I hope the video journal from the Spokane newspaper is still available online...it's really sweet. Check out the Angels on Empire.

How do you compete with caffeinated jelly beans?

We did our best, but the guy in the next booth was definitely more popular than we were--after all, who wants to meet chicks handing out disease brochures?! (He was really nice though--donated a box of beans for our ALS walk in September.)

This sort of thing really brings out the INTROvert in me. My mom was out there waving stuff around and promoting ALS night at the Indians ballpark and the walk, and I just wanted to crawl under the table. But I tried. Maybe next time will be easier.

After standing three hours on the concrete floor, Mom and I both wanted to crawl on a massage table for a couple of hours.

ALS candlelight vigil

It was a freezing, windy night at the baseball park, but we had almost 100 people show up for this year's candlelight vigil. As we held our candles, we were especially thinking of Carrie and Jenny, our friends who are living with ALS; of Jim, whose wife (a former schoolmate of mine) and two teenagers are taking one day at a time after his death earlier this month; and most of all, of course, my dad, Ethan's grandpa, who died eight months ago today. We miss you.